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Friday, 1 May 2015

Pacquiao and Mayweather trainers exchange blows ahead of mega-fight

Floyd
Mayweather Sr and Freddie Roach agreed on one thing on Thursday:
Floyd’s son will try to knock out Manny Pacquiao in the early rounds of
their fight here on Saturday night.

Apart from that sliver
of consensus, it was insult as usual – most of them coming from
Mayweather in a ritual that descended into tedium after a promising
start by Roach.

“He’s
picked his fights but I don’t think he picked this one,” Roach said of
the opponent with the unbeaten record, the clout at the negotiating
table and the substantially bigger slice of a pie that might grow as big
as $400m for all concerned to squabble over. “I
think Showtime forced him to take this fight,” he added, referring to
Mayweather’s television backers who have him signed to a six-fight deal
with two innings left to play and who must have been seriously
disappointed he chose to fight Marcos Maidana twice last year instead of
going Pacquiao-hunting.

But
it is sealed now and they are ready to go. Fight week has been more
subdued that usual, especially for an event billed as The Fight Of The
Century, with aspirations to drag in four million pay-per-view
customers.

The eyes of the sporting world will, briefly, be on
boxing on Saturday night, a rarity in an era of sometimes tough-to-sell
quality and viewed from the couches of the world through the squeezed
portal of subscription and PPV television.

“It’d be great to win,” Roach said. “I’m not sure it’s a must-win. I don’t think our careers would be over. Big for both guys.”

Nowhere
is the sense of anticipation greater than in the mind of Roach. It is a
mind blighted by Parkinson’s disease but his dignity and tenacity in
coping with it is heart-lifting:

“I
work out every day, hand-eye exercises work well for me. I’ve got new
medication and haven’t had the shakes in over six months.”

Just
as moving is Roach’s devotion to Pacquiao, who walked into his Wild
Card gym in Hollywood 15 years ago and went on to win world titles at
eight different weights, a phenomenal achievement for a dirt-poor
Filipino who earned $2 for his first fight.

“I’ve
been training for this for five years,” he said. “I’ve studied this guy
for five years. I know a lot about him. I think we’ve got him covered.
[Pacquiao] was down to 144lb yesterday. I told him the workout today is
not going to be heavy.”

There
are, of course, hiccups. There are always hiccups, late rows, childish
spats and arguments that are incomprehensible to anyone but the alleged
grown-ups involved. The latest one – an old favourite – has to do with
the Mayweathers’ reluctance so far to have their selected gloves
examined and weighed by the Nevada State Athletic Commission. It will
happen but the row will be used as a psychological stick for a little
bit yet.

“We
selected our gloves a couple of days ago,” Roach said. “I don’t know if
his are in yet but it’s long past their due date. I want to know are
they half horsehair half foam, just foam or just horsehair.”

Mayweather
Sr’s response was to laugh about Roach’s concerns and dismiss the
complaint as needless worrying, betraying fear as much as anything else.

Roach,
though, has no worries about the officials. “I think we’ve got a great
referee and some good judges. The [use of] elbows and the shoulders,
though, [the referee] should be warning Mayweather about that. If he
doesn’t we’re well prepared to deal with that.”

As
for Mayweather Sr’s contribution to the discussion in a separate press
conference in the same room, there really is not much of substance to
report, apart from his startling admission that he does not know how
many times his son has been drug-tested. It was Mayweather Jr who
insisted over a protracted period that Pacquiao should submit himself to
blood-testing. “Don’t know,” was Mayweather Sr’s curt reply. Roach
meanwhile, was happy to reveal that Pacquiao, once so fearful of
needles, has been tested 12 times already and might be tested again
before the fight.

The relationship between the trainers has been
fractious but the suspicion has always been there was an element of
theatre about it. Roach was happy to give the impression that this view
had substance.

Floyd chose not to agree, repeating his old “Freddie Roach, dope coach” line.

“I
am the best trainer of all time,” he concluded. It echoed the ego and
the confidence of his son. And he is a fine trainer but he is annoyingly
impossible to nail down with a question – just as Floyd Jr is elusive
in the ring.

And
then came their agreement on how the fight might begin. “Yeah we’re
gonna go at him,” Mayweather said. “But we gonna knock him out. This
fight over already.”